[Fredslist] Re: Letters for Lisa should be cc'd to these agencies.

Mon Mar 24 20:46:07 EDT 2008

A cc to one or more othe following agencies often results in more noise and a faster reply.

  Better Business Bureau
  US/NYS Department of Consumer Affairs
  FCC (thank you Linda Lamel)
  FTC
  US State Dept.
  Department of Commerce

  Also, don't forget your local news stations -- especially the 5 PM news shows.
  I have sent this to a couple of journalists friends and will report back with other advice.

  Kelly Welles

AST10359 at aol.com wrote:
  I have sent a slightly revised letter to Robert Dotson at T Mobile and I provide the text below, so that anyone else may utilize it.  Good luck to Lisa!

March 24, 2008
Mr. Robert Dotson 
President and Chief Executive Officer 
T Mobile 
12920 SE 38th Street 
Bellevue, WA 98006

Dear Mr. Dotson: 

The subject of this letter is an egregious wrong which T Mobile has imposed on a colleague of mine.  I am calling this situation to your attention because it also reflects poorly on T Mobile's ability to attract new customers and requires immediate redress.  After you have read the facts, please imagine what effect adverse publicity in the media would have on T Mobile's reputation, if the matter were to reach the newspapers or television in New York.

Lisa Welsein and her Danish husband Kristoffer are recently married. Kristoffer is employed by the United Nations and accepted a post in Nairobi, Kenya. Kristoffer works for the International Food Bank, and Lisa, a gifted teacher is seeking employment. Below is their T Mobile information. 
*The name on the account it: Lisa Marie Mueller Welsien*
*The phone number: 917-412-2354 (my husband's line on the account is
202-294-0302)*
*Account number: 513008005*
*The last four digits of my SS: 2704* 

They arrived in Nairobi just prior to the ethnic fighting which took place in the past few months. Lisa's phone was not working properly and she asked a local merchant to repair it. Just arrived, and in need of communication with her worried family, she was not familiar with the way things work in a third world country like Kenya, having been raised in a rural area in Massachusetts. Her SIM card was stolen by the vendor and sold to a third party who immediately ran up over $7000 in telephone calls.

At the beginning of 2008 Lisa wrote to a friend: 

I am using my cell phone with a Kenyan sim card, but I thought the American sim card was in a different location. I did not find out that the man who repaired my cell phone stole my American sim card until 2 days ago. He pulled a very smooth fast one on me, and the Diplomatic Police here in Kenya are still investigating. I have a meeting scheduled with them tomorrow, and provided them with the most updated call logs that I could get from T-Mobile today (although they won't give me the logs since January 28th and since then the user has put over $2,000 on the bill).

If I had known the card was stolen I would obviously have reported it, but T-Mobile's complaint with me is that I didn't report it and so I have to pay it. If I was in America, I could sue the man for the money but most people in Kenya don't make that much money (almost $7,000) in an entire year.

One final thing: the reason my cell phone account wasn't canceled when I moved to Kenya two months ago is because T-Mobile would not allow us to break our contract penalty-free until we had proof of our address in Kenya.

The final bill that T-Mobile is charging me is $6,857.14 Kristoffer and I are not looking forward to adding $6400 to our already-steep educational debt which we are paying off on one income at the moment. Sort of defeats the purpose of saving money in a developing country when you have to pay off some crook's funny business.

Lisa has "gone through channels" in Nairobi and has reached out to other individuals at T Mobile to no avail. I believe it is an outrage and a travesty that an innocent young couple, who have been taken advantage of by a criminal, should be expected to pay that debt. I think it really bad business practices that no one at T Mobile has reached out to help this young couple who are doing great work for the UN. I appeal to you, as head of a company with 39,000 employees to correct this problem.

I look forward to a speedy response and a correct resolution to this problem. 

Sincerely, 

Anita S. Taub

**************
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